After conservative outrage over the allegation that Facebook news editors were biased against conservative sources, Facebook “solved” the problem by removing humans from the decision-making process entirely. As of last Friday, descriptions of news events would be served to readers using an algorithm that cribbed the description from trending news topics. The result is precisely what might be expected—and in a conservative media world increasingly unkempt in the distinction between fact and fiction, precisely what those conservatives demanded.
But just days after the policy change, Facebook’s algorithm chose a very bad, factually incorrect headline to explain to its news-hungry users why Megyn Kelly was trending.
The headline, which was visible to anyone who hovered over Megyn Kelly’s name on the Trending list, refers to the Fox News personality as a “traitor” and claims that the cable channel has “Kick[ed] her out for backing Hillary.”
The algorithm-chosen headline was chosen from a conspiracy-peddling conservative site: “Fox News Exposes Traitor Megyn Kelly, Kicks Her Out For Backing Hillary.” It was, of course, untrue—a “typo-ridden aggregation of an aggregation”—but was served up as legitimate news by Facebook algorithm for “several hours” as a top story.
Human intervention can, of course, far more easily police a newsfeed for error-filled stories or deliberate misinformation than current algorithms—but that would introduce claims of bias from those whose stories were passed over for having such errors. A simpler purely algorithmic approach, on the other hand, might identify outlets known for false or misleading stories and prevent them from being used as highlighted representations of a trending topic—but this would amount to “blacklisting” untrustworthy news sources and would be seen, by the purveyors of untrustworthy news, as far worse.
The current outcome, then, is precisely what conservatives demanded in their meeting with Facebook: an end to editorial discretion when serving their readership with trending news. Yes, the news might be false—but as long as the story is trending, who cares?
TWEET OF THE DAY
BLAST FROM THE PAST
At Daily Kos on this date in 2007—Nuclear Weapons, Nonproliferation, and the 2008 Democratic Presidential Candidates:
It was July 16, 1945. At 5:29:45 AM, the quiet southern New Mexico desert morning was shattered by an explosion, the effects of which were felt as far north as Albuquerque. It was the famous Trinity nuclear weapon test, the brainchild of the Manhattan Project, born of the concern that Nazi Germany was developing a similar weapon.
However, Germany wasn't on anyone's mind that morning, as World War II had ended in Europe two months earlier. The war still raged in the Pacific theater; after the successful test of "the gadget" in New Mexico, Manhattan Project Metallurgical Laboratory scientist Leo Szilard, and 69 of his colleagues sent a petition to President Truman expressing their opposition to the use of nuclear weapons against Japan. The petition warned of triggering an arms race, with dire international consequences.